New keywords for the internal areas of the country Territorial cohesion, Small municipalities, Immigration, Landscape restoration

The following paper sets out some of the dominant themes that have characterized a decades-long debate in Italy on inland/mountainous areas. In fact, in the country there is an almost total coincidence between the two connotations, which somewhat complicates the picture of socio-economic and environmental problems that policy must address. Unfortunately, it must be noted that, albeit in different ways, various measures to support inland/mountainous areas have not produced significant results because some social, economic and territorial pathologies have proven to be physiological and therefore unassailable by any kind of targeted measure. Currently, the issue is being taken up again with much energy, including through the formulation of intervention hypotheses involving recently intensified dynamics, such as immigration, and reviving concepts such as territorial cohesion, landscape restoration, and small municipality. The paper considers these various points by exploring some of their characters and highlighting the many weaknesses that still risk thwarting initiatives underway today if simplistic equations are insisted upon and criteria of more pronounced complexity are not pursued.